


As the Fear of Drowning

by stardropdream



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Breathplay, F/M, Gun Kink, Guns, Minor Violence, Non-Explicit Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-02-04 11:31:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1777501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He feels the kiss of the gun more than anything else, feels the flutter of her breath beneath his palm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As the Fear of Drowning

**Author's Note:**

> I should mention that the breathplay is minor, but I figured it was worth mentioning just in case. Written for the prompt "against a wall", but I have to admit the guns and threat of violence kind of overshadowed it, sadly (or not sadly?). Anyway, first try writing this pairing, so wheee.

Athos can’t help but wonder sometimes how it is that he can allow himself to fall into these situations. Perhaps he covets them still, or perhaps it is simply the whim of a cruel God up there that forces him to see her around every corner, to constantly worry that she will wisp back into his life with all the force of a storm only to flit away as only the vivid remainder of his exhausted, mourning memories. It is a cruelty, to feel all this acutely, to always see her where she is not – and yet still remain ill-prepared for when she is there, when she actually does emerge from the darkness, living and breathing and eyes burning as she drinks him in. 

The street isn’t dissimilar to any other, and it is not the first time that he’s met her in the dead of night. Still, it feels as if he is in a world separate from all others – even when he can hear the distant bustle of prostitutes calling out to men passing in the night, as he is – even when he can hear the distant scuffles and laughter of people living their lines, blissfully unaware, blissfully happy. The ground is grit and grime beneath him and he can only stare at her as she leans casually against the corner of a wall, as if she will slink back off into the shadows, never to be seen again. 

The moon hangs low on the horizon, stained a dark red and he can’t help but think of blood, or wine, or the gripping, fearful part of him that curls tight around his heart, glowing red with pain and desire, coiled tightly inside of him. 

It is not so surprising that he should look at her, startled in surprise to realize she is truly there and not an apparition, and the next moment find that he is the one pressed against the wall, with her looking at him as if it is simple, as if her eyes are not heavy with the glow of moonlight and unfulfilled promises, the cool barrel of his gun pressed to his forehead, poised nonchalantly in her hand. 

“What are you doing here?” he asks, desperate – it is a nightmare. He has fallen into a nightmare, a nightmare that is full only of her, only of her smile, her scent, her memory – the way he gets drunk just on her, dives down deeper and deeper into the embrace of a ghost, and his throat constricts and he stares at her, at once remembering all the reasons he cannot trust her, cannot love her, and all the reasons why he still does, despite everything. 

“Athos,” she greets, voice quiet, the words coming out almost like a whispered prayer, almost like a laugh – something so reminiscent, a broken chuckle torn from a broken throat, as if she is poison and he still yearns to drink. 

He nods, just barely, at the greeting, feels the cold kiss of the gun against his forehead. Shadows cast across her face and he cannot make out her expression properly, despite their proximity. Athos knows, though, that her face is lilting, a hidden, secretive smile. 

“To what,” he says, voice dry and scratching up from inside him, trying to remember to breathe, to speak, to be _normal_ , “do I owe this pleasure?” 

He shifts a little, as if to break free, and she steps closer, swiftly pinning him back up against the wall, pinning him there between her legs, between the soft folds of her dress, one hand pressed up against his chest, the other curled luxuriously around the handle of the gun. The hand on his chest is both anchor and brand, tethering him to the ground and burning him alive. 

“The pleasure,” she repeats, her voice a soft wisp of smoke. And he closes his eyes – so briefly – to think that he’s spent these last five years believing her dead, gone forever, how easily it’d destroyed him, how unraveled his life has become, because of her ghost. And now she is before him, flesh and blood, her words biting. 

When he opens his eyes, she’s regarding him silently, tilting her head, and her eyes are sharp and observant and he feels exposed, strewn across a table and drunk and unresponsive – pinned there, like an insect caught in her gaze. 

And slowly she drags the gun down, from his forehead to trail along his cheek. It trails along the line of his jaw, and he shivers, before she presses the gun forcefully into his mouth. It strikes the back of his throat and he flinches, but only for a moment, watching as her smile darkens. The look is enough to freeze him to the spot. 

“I suppose that was rather rude of me,” she says quietly but doesn’t move the gun back. “Without so much as a hello. But I suppose you don’t mind it, do you?”

And he clenches his eyes shut against the shame that presses up hard against his chest, because of how easily she sees through him, how easily, even now, she can read him and know him perfectly. He tries to find the words, but all he can do is taste the grit and gunpowder of her gun – and he tongues at it for a moment, if only to press the barrel into his cheek so he can speak, voice quiet and strangled as he chokes out the vowels. 

“Why are you here?” he mumbles past the barrel of the gun. 

“I’m enjoying the view,” she says quietly, lifts her free hand so that the backs of her fingertips brush down his cheek, over the bulge left by the gun before she shifts her other hand just enough so that the barrel returns to sitting heavy on his tongue. Somehow, it doesn’t occur to him to be afraid – he merely watches her, body frozen only by her eyes, not by the weapon. He knows – somehow, he knows – she will not pull the trigger. There is no reason for him to fear what won’t happen – although he cannot know what it is that tells him so, what it is hidden in the glimmering flints of her eyes that assures him that she still has so much left for him to do – that murdering him here without any finesse would not be her style. 

This is, perhaps, what he hates the most about her – what he loves and what he despises. That she can read him so easily. And that he can still know the cruelty that streaks down inside of her. 

“Why?” he repeats, used to the heavy weight of the gun between his teeth, tasting the soot lingering. 

“To tell you would just ruin the surprise,” she says, her thumb trailing along the side of the barrel, a sensual touch that sets his blood on fire just watching it. His eyes flicker up to meet hers and he knows that she knows, too, what she is doing to him. 

“As if I don’t know your intentions,” he whispers.

“I wonder sometimes,” she says quietly, and does not flinch when Athos raises a hand to wrap around her throat, palm pressing against her windpipe – if only for something to hold onto, to anchor him. She doesn’t even blink. She watches him, resolute and seemingly passive, gun grinding into the back of his throat and making Athos choke, his breathing harsh through his nostrils. He squeezes her throat in warning. 

She presses to him, pinning him further against the wall and ignoring the way the air moves slower to her lungs, her heart racing against his chest – he can feel it through their clothes, perhaps because he knows to listen for it, perhaps because he still marvels that it still beats, perhaps because he never forgot the feel of it. She presses to him, in a way that his hand doesn’t falter, in a way that he can squeeze the life from her.

She meets his gaze, coolly. “You’ve tried that before,” she whispers, “Is a hand better than a noose, Athos?” 

She swallows and he feels her throat against his palm. He can feel the hum of her words, soft and coated with honey, dangerously sharp and brittle against him. He can see the fire in her eyes, their noses close enough to touch, feeling her breath ghost across his mouth. 

“I felt that I died with him,” he says, quietly, his own voice heavy around the gun. “With you.”

“Yet here we both stand, alive,” she says, her eyes flickering to his mouth for a moment before she slowly pulls the gun from him, trails it down over his chin and presses it against his throat. He feels the kiss of the gun more than anything else, feels the flutter of her breath beneath his palm. “For the most part, at least.” 

There is a joke in there, some kind of cruelty – but she does not laugh. She touches her thumb to his bottom lip. “I could kill you right here. Make no mistake of that.”

The barrel is cold against his throat, pushed to his adam’s apple. “I make no mistake of it.”

She looks up at him again and he is lost in them, drowning already in his inability to move, inability to speak. “Good.” 

“I blame myself for what you’ve become,” he says.

The gun is sharp against his throat when she pushes in suddenly. “How very lawful of you, dear husband.”

He arches, hand shaking at her throat, squeezing just slightly, if only because he can, if only because he wants to anchor himself, to hold her, to remember her – his wife, once. She doesn’t flinch or try to dart away, just regards him coldly, as if daring him to even try – knowing that he won’t, knowing that he _can’t_. 

“Go ahead,” she says, reaching down and grasping his free hand, lifting it so it curls around her neck, too. “Snap my neck, Athos. Crush the life from me. _Do it._ ” 

His hands shake and he tries to speak – and cannot. Her hand covers one of his, fingertips sliding along the dips of his knuckles, then the back of his hand – tracing up his arm, and he shudders and shivers or does _something_ even as he stays rooted in place, watches as her hand brushes across his shoulder and down over his chest, down between them where she has him pressed against the wall. She touches him, and he’s shamed to know that he is hard, that she can still summon such a response from him. 

She is smiling, just slightly, hard and brittle, but triumphant. Her eyes sparkle in the moonlight cast by the bloodied moon. He watches her, wary and uncertain, torn between desire and disgust, and she draws her lips into a thin line before smiling at him. He tries to press away but she merely follows him and he feels as if he will melt back into the wall. Her fingers curl around one wrist and slowly peels his hand away from her throat. Then drops it down, splayed over his chest, where his heart beats. 

“I cannot forget what you’ve done,” he says, for want of something to say, knowing, too, that it is not the first time he’s said it.

She doesn’t appear to be listening, though, her palm shifting to press where the locket hangs around his neck, beneath his jacket. He knows she can feel the outline. She isn’t looking at him, instead looking at her hand – as if there is something infinitely precious and something infinitely destroyed – like she is torn between savoring it or destroying it herself. 

He watches her, and then his hand falls, seeming to move without thought, grasping the gun at his side and lifting it, pressing it against her temple. For once, she seems surprised, and it flits across her face before she smothers it down, looking up at him with a nonchalant twist of her mouth. 

And then she smiles. “My. A gun rather than a hand, now.” 

He presses the gun harder against her temple, in an effort to get her to move back, for anything to grasp onto to, to ground himself. She doesn’t move, though, her own gun moving with gentle care to press against the underside of his chin. 

“I’m well aware,” she says, unbuttoning his top button of his coat, fingers curling harshly around the locket. “That you refuse to forget what’s between us – it’s for the best. It’s for the best, perhaps.” She tilts her head, studying the little forget-me-not at her fingertips. Her finger curls around the trigger of the gun and she moves closer, brushing her mouth against his in a shadow of a kiss, her words a quiet hiss, “I’m well aware you can’t just let things _go_ so easily, even once they’re dead.” 

“I don’t want to hear this,” he whispers out, voice broken. 

“If you don’t – then why not silence me for good?” she asks, her words weighted. 

His finger touches at the trigger – and knows that he won’t pull it, just as sure as he is that she won’t pull hers, either. He shifts his eyes to hers, and watches her lips quirk up into a knowing smile. 

“I have lived with your voice for five years,” he says, “haunting me.” 

“Am I meant to be sympathetic, that you should be haunted by those you’ve murdered?” 

“No,” he gasps out, his heart thudding painfully in his chest, his entire body twisted up and at her mercy. He stares at her, as if she is salvation – and his hell. “No, I only – I could never forget you. I have carried you all these years.” 

“As have I,” she whispers, thumb pressing to the locket, finger pressing to the trigger, gun pressing to his skin. Her fingers drum against his chest, brushing along his exposed skin along the collar of his coat. “Know that it is the only thing that drives me – to make you pay for what you’ve done.” 

She looks to him, then, and leans up, kissing him. 

He freezes. The world suddenly tilts into a painful silence and stillness, grinding to a halt along with his heart, hanging there as if waiting for permission to resume. He shakes a little, his spine bending, and the only coherent thought that flits across his mind is the sound of her name whispered out in ecstasy, soft and wisped, as if he can grasp it. He feels her breathe out, feels her lick at his upper lip and then into his mouth, and he finds himself kissing her back until she sucks the breath from him, until he can hardly remember anything but that distant memory of her touch. 

She draws back, enough to breathe, barely a hair’s space between them – and she studies his face, touches at his cheek, and then leans in again, lips grazing over his mouth and along his jaw, and to his ear, a small offering. “You’re shaking.” 

He doesn’t answer, alarmed and confused, his entire body shaking with the effort of holding himself together, fearing that he will shake apart and fall to her feet. He turns his head a little, towards her, feeling her warm breath over his cheek and into his ear. Warmth, and a bitter loneliness of knowing what was lost, what was never real at all. 

“You are,” she says softer, after a quiet moment, and almost sound disbelieving that he’s incapable of pulling himself together. Instead, he slumps against the wall, just barely, open and exposed to her, staring at her and at nothing, over past her shoulder. She leans in closer and he does not lean away. She touches his hair and he does not pull back. He feels the mouth of the gun press against him and stay there, and he mimics her, pressing it to her skin, like a prolonged kiss. 

He murmurs her name, a prayer and a condemnation. 

This time, when she smiles, the corners of her eyes crinkle. “And what will you do now, I wonder.” 

And she touches him again, hard and strained against his clothes, and his breath hitches. And it takes simple, quick work for her to shed him away in layers, and it is only the support of the wall that keeps him from falling apart, keeps him standing upright as she collects her skirts in her hand, presses up against him, and guides his free hand up and under, touching at her – and he sucks in a sharp breath to feel her, slick and warm and open to him, and it’s simple work, a phantom memory, to slide his fingers over her, touch her, press into her, and watch her arch, hear the sounds he’d known intimately. The bite of the gun presses to his skin but he just presses into her, and then pulls his hand back, only so she can hook her hips up against his and slide down onto him, taking him in. 

And he thrusts, shaking, held together only by the wall’s support, his uniform splayed open before him, feeling her as she moves against him, pushes him hard up against the wall and doesn’t let him leave. He stares at her, lips slightly parted, but she does not kiss him. 

As quickly as it happens, it’s over, and he comes inside her, muffling his voice before he can cry out. She rocks against him, and he fumbles a little, as if to reach for her, to help her, but instead she slides away from him and he’s exposed and vulnerable, watching her go and wanting to shove her away and draw her close at the same time. He thinks, bleakly, he should be ashamed of how quickly he gave in, of how quickly she can make him come undone. 

She adjusts her dress, kisses the top of her gun before pressing the mouth of the barrel to his mouth, in parting, and turns from him. 

He watches her. “You shouldn’t turn your back so easily on your enemy.” 

She pauses, and slowly tilts her head so she can look at him over her shoulder, her smile softening for half a moment, the moonlight glowing warmth into her eyes, glinting and razor-sharp. 

“We are so much more than just that,” she says. “You won’t kill me.” 

“You sound so sure,” he whispers, and knows she’s right.

“Your hands are always around my throat – and still I breathe,” she says, turning more fully towards him. “Is it nobleness or cowardice though?” She smiles, quieter now. “Always you let go.” 

“You don’t know that,” he whispers out, grasping for something to say, grasping for a way to breathe normally again. 

“For whatever reason, you’ve kept me alive,” she continues, “despite your best efforts.”

“You keep me alive, too,” he returns, fixing his clothes, pressing himself back against the wall because he fears he cannot stand on his own without it. “I shudder to think it is from mercy.” 

“I wonder if our reasons are the same,” she says after a long pause, and turns her back to him once more – and he cannot see her expression. He can imagine the beat of her heart. The tilt of her smile. He tries to imagine her eyes, feels that he will drown in just the memory of them. 

“Does it matter?” he whispers out, watching the way her hair falls down her back, the way she hides her gun so elegantly in her sleeve – the perfect image of an innocent, if not for the fleur-de-lis he knows is branded forever into her shoulder. 

She doesn’t answer him, merely starts walking, moving back into the shadows. “We’ll see each other again soon, dearest Athos.”


End file.
